


i am here

by practicallywritesitself



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Backstory, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Found Family, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug, Other, POV Luke Skywalker, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Canon, Present Tense, Sibling Bonding, like seriously. give him the comfort he deserves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23451463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/practicallywritesitself/pseuds/practicallywritesitself
Summary: everyone luke skywalker has ever loved is gone. well, almost everyone, and she’s not going anywhere.in which luke and leia get some well deserved bonding time.
Relationships: (referenced), Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	i am here

**Author's Note:**

> so this is probably wildly out of canon but i don’t care. more notes at end <3

Ewoks sure know how to party. 

After hours of celebration consisting of traditional Endorian music, a feast in his honor, and a lethal combination of whatever spirits they made out in this part of the galaxy, Luke had finally escaped and made his way back to his father’s funeral pyre. 

He isn’t sure why he’s feeling so torn up about Vader’s death. Luke knows, logically, that his father was cruel, terrifying, and the root cause of so many of the galaxy’s problems. But Luke had been right about him in the end. He hadn’t been totally consumed by the Dark Side — there had been enough light left in him to save Luke. 

If only he could have done the same. If only he’d been strong enough to fight off the Emperor himself. If only he’d gotten Vader back to the X-Wing sooner. If only—

A figure sits down next to him, her profile illuminated by the dying fire still burning before them. Her hair isn’t pulled up like it usually is, and her face, as far as Luke can tell in the low light, is still marred with dirt and more than a few scratches. But she looks just as beautiful as she did the first time he saw her in Artoo’s hologram — an event that seems so long ago, so detached from anything Luke has experienced in the last few months. 

“Too much liquor?” Leia asks, not taking her eyes off the flames. 

“You could say that,” Luke replies, not taking his eyes off her. 

Leia turns to him then, and Luke feels it — the same feeling he had on Tatooine, the first time he saw her. A connection. A kinship. 

Her eyes are brown, and his are blue, but they’re made of the same stuff. Stardust and hope and a longing for everything to be okay, for a better world than the one they’re living in now. 

Leia reaches over and takes his hand. Their eyes are still locked. 

“When did you know?” she asks, and Luke doesn’t have to ask what she means. 

“Yoda told me on Degobah,” he responds, “but I knew way before that.”

Leia smiles softly, just a quirk of her lips, and gives his hand a squeeze. “Me too.”

Luke turns away, suddenly unable to look at Leia any longer. It’s too painful. He can imagine that she has his father’s eyes.  _ Their  _ father’s eyes. 

“Are you ever going to be able to tell me what happened?” Leia asks quietly. 

Tears burn the back of Luke’s eyes. “I don’t know,” he says, because he knows telling her the truth — that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to tell  _ anyone  _ what happened — will upset her. 

Luke doesn’t want to upset her. 

“I miss Alderaan,” she says suddenly, and Luke’s heart shrivels even further. He turns back to her, his face falling. 

“Stars, Leia, with everything that’s happened, I didn’t even think to—”

Leia shakes her head firmly. “No. You don’t have to apologize.” She meets his gaze again — this time, her eyes are stormy and round and determined. “You are the  _ only  _ one who never has to apologize.”

Luke has become comfortable with the Force. He knows Obi-Wan would be proud of him. But the connection between him and Leia is different — it crackles and bends but doesn’t break. Luke doesn’t think it could ever break. 

“I miss Tatooine, too,” Luke says after a moment. He laughs quietly in spite of himself. “It’s crazy. I spent every minute on that rock wishing I was somewhere else, and now it’s the only place in the galaxy I want to be.”

“I know what you mean,” Leia agrees. 

Luke cocks his head. “You do?”

Leia nods. “I never asked to be a princess,” she explains. “I know, it sounds so bratty — I had such a better life than so many, even those on Alderaan. But it was stuffy. All appearance and no substance. I wanted to be a part of the action.”

Leia is scratching at the log they’re sitting on with her fingernail, pointedly not looking at Luke anymore. She’s removed her hand from his, too. Luke doesn’t move, is afraid even one wrong breath will raise the walls Leia has finally let down. 

“That’s why I took the assignment on the Runner. I knew there was a chance — a  _ good  _ chance — that we’d be caught by the Empire. But I’d been reduced to figurehead status for so long, even in the Alliance. I needed to do something — actually  _ do  _ something that would have an effect on the galaxy.” The corner of her lip quirks. “I guess it did, after all.”

Luke opens his mouth to speak, but Leia continues. “But it wasn’t just about the Rebellion,” she says, her voice now a whisper. “I felt something. When they offered me the assignment.”

“The Force,” Luke offers. 

Leia shakes her head. “No — well, maybe part of it.” She locks eyes with Luke. “I knew I’d see my father.”

A chill runs down Luke’s spine. 

“It was him, wasn’t it?” Leia says, and though she hasn’t raised her voice, it carries, echoing throughout the clearing. “Vader. He was our father.”

Luke can’t do anything but nod. 

Leia  _ visibly _ relaxes, like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders. Luke knows how she feels — despite the fear, despite the implications, knowing his father’s identity released a burden Luke hadn’t even known he’d been carrying. 

“His name was Anakin,” Luke tells her. “Anakin Skywalker.” He can’t believe he’s saying this out loud. Obi-Wan’s ghost had answered all of Luke’s questions before he’d gone aboard the Death Star to face his father, agreeing that Luke needed to know his past before he could confront it. He’d planned to tell Leia, of course. She deserved to know who their father was. But not like this. Not mere hours after he had died. After Luke had been unable to save him. 

Leia is watching him with interest. He can feel the anticipation radiating off her in waves, her energy tangible and ready. She needs to know her history as much as Luke does. 

He clears his throat and continues. 

“Our mother was a Senator. Padmé Amidala, former queen of Naboo. They met on Tatooine, when she was traveling with Obi-Wan and his master to escape the Trade Federation.”

Leia’s intake of breath interrupts Luke’s train of thought. He looks over, taking her hand gingerly. “Are you okay?”

Leia nods. “Go on. Please.”

Luke does as she says. He tells her everything, the whole story — from Anakin and Padmé’s hidden romance, to their victory in the Clone Wars, to Anakin’s betrayal of Obi-Wan, his mentor, his best friend in the world. 

When he’s finished, Leia looks shaken, but not destroyed in the way Luke had felt after he’d heard it for the first time. Leia isn’t like Luke in the way that he only looks for the best in people. Leia acknowledges the bad, passes her own judgement. Only the worthy are given her affection. She isn’t knocked off balance hearing what Anakin had done because she’d faced that side of him a long, long time ago. 

“Do you think she would have been proud?” she asks.

“Who?”

“Our mother.”

“Oh.” Luke thinks for a moment. The only thing he really knows about Padmè is that she loved her husband, so much so that she was willing to believe he was only noble until the very end. Remembering the way Vader looked in those last moments — his helmet off, eyes shining as he looked at his son — Luke isn't sure what she would say. 

“I think she would be,” Leia answers her own question. 

Luke doesn’t have the heart to argue, so he shifts the conversation to something marginally less depressing. 

“I wish we’d grown up together,” he says. “You would have loved Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen.” He pauses. “Not sure about the moisture farming, though.”

Leia laughs, a sound so welcome to Luke’s ears he almost melts into the ground beneath him. “It would have been nice,” she agrees. “You could have taught me how to fly a speeder.”

“And you could have shown me how to do your princess wave.”

She elbows him. “I wouldn’t have  _ been  _ a princess, nerdherder.”

Luke elbows back, and after a few moments they’re practically on top of each other, slapping and pinching like real siblings. It’s so refreshing Luke might cry. 

They detach themselves from each other and sit back on the log, close enough that Leia can rest her head on Luke’s shoulder and Luke can intertwine their fingers without having to reach far at all. 

“I’ve always wanted a brother,” Leia whispers, and despite everything — despite losing his aunt and uncle, despite never having known his mother, despite being unable to rescue his father from the Dark Side — Luke feels almost complete. 

He feels like he’s found a home. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> so like. i don’t know if they address the whole “our father is darth fucking vader” in like spin-offs but if they do i don’t give a fuck. this is how it happened now. 
> 
> i literally banged this out in like half an hour because i just love these two so much and they need closure babey. also i steered clear from any referenced romance (han/leia, luke/han etc) because i thought it would detract from the main focus, which is of course that they have ~each other~. 
> 
> thank you all so much for reading. please leave kudos + comments. i live off them. peace and love babes!


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